Learn practical strategies to handle emerging trends and leadership challenges in private schools.
No matter if you’re a School Head, Admission Director, Development Director, Board member, or any other private school administrator—Ideas & Perspectives, ISM’s premier private school publication, has strategic solutions for the pervasive problems you face.
- Tuition not keeping pace with your expenses? In I&P, explore how to use strategic financial planning to create your budget and appropriately adjust your tuition.
- Enrollment dropping off? Discover how to implement the right admission and enrollment management strategies that engage your community—and fill your classrooms.
- Trouble retaining teachers? Learn how you can best support your teachers using ISM’s Comprehensive Faculty Development framework. Your faculty members will become more enthusiastic about their roles—which ultimately improves student outcomes.
- Fundraising campaigns not as successful as you’d hoped? Implement ISM’s practical advice and guidance to build a thriving annual fund, construct an effective capital campaign, and secure major donors—no matter your community size or location.
- Not sure how to provide professional development—for you and your staff? Learn ways to develop and fund a successful professional development strategy. You can improve teacher-centered satisfaction and growth, which in turn strengthens student-centered learning.
- Problematic schedule? You can master the challenges of scheduling with the help of ISM’s practical advice, based on our experience with hundreds of schools and our time-tested theories.
- And so much more.
I&P has shared targeted research, up-to-date insight, and sound theory with school leaders since 1975. More than 8,500 private school decision-makers find the answers to their schools’ administrative and governance matters in our advisory letter. We give you the strategic answers you need.
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See the articles from our latest issue of Ideas & Perspectives.
Addressing Bullying and Sexual Misconduct
Volume 36 No. 3 // February 17, 2011
As the competition between private and public schools intensifies each year, it is not always the luxuries or differentiators associated with attending a private school that become more critical. Rather, the basic but vital The ISM 37-School Parent Survey: Why Families Can Afford Your Schools Tuition is of immense concern to private school parents and students. While clearly one of the most difficult and unpleasant topics to attempt to get one's head around, there are no more important issues for you to address than potential misconduct and bullying toward your students. At issue here is not only concern for the student's physical and emotional safety, but the reality that students simply cannot learn effectively when they do not feel safe.
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Understanding Faculty Culture Differences Across School Divisions
Volume 36 No. 2 // January 28, 2011
While ISM has long written about faculty culture, and there has been the sense of a monolithic culture, the reality is that each division in our schools seems to have a particular character. Of course, if your school only has one division, then unity is a much simpler concept to understand.
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ISM’s 20 Success Predictors for the 21st Century
Volume 36 No. 2 // January 28, 2011
ISM has for 15 years published—at five-year intervals—its list of the prime correlates necessary to sustain mission-specific excellence. This periodically revised, evidence-based list, known as the ISM Stability Markers®, has been in widespread use as both a lens through which to self-evaluate and as a means by which to strengthen a school’s longest-term financial and organizational stability and excellence.
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Mid-Year Financial Reports and Your Strategic Financial Plan
Volume 36 No. 1 // December 30, 2010
ISM has long recommended six-year strategic plans that are enacted every four years. The financial expression of that plan, ISM has suggested, should be shown on a single sheet: 13 lines and six columns. ISM calls this single-sheet display the strategic financial plan (SFP).
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Advanced Placement: A Critical Study
Volume 36 No. 1 // December 30, 2010
Harvard Education Press has brought out a new book, AP: A Critical Examination of the Advanced Placement Program,1 which is an interesting collection of essays from a variety of viewpoints, and the findings demonstrate the controversies in this area. Although it is not ISM’s primary interest, social equity is a prominent element of the book. While ISM is sensitive to social issues, we are more directly concerned with the appropriateness of Advanced Placement for private-independent schools. We have consistently opposed its use. How does this new book advance the conversation?
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The 21st Century School: Facilities
Volume 36 No. 1 // December 30, 2010
If you, as School Head or Board President, are thinking of or are in the process of planning new or renovated facilities, ISM recommends that you ask this simple question: What do we know about the uses and need for this building in five to 10 years? The honest answer given the dramatic changes in the delivery of education that we and many others have been commenting on is that we are not at all sure. However, there are strong hints and emerging practices in school architecture that provide us with a little confidence in thinking about our next projects.1
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New Faculty and Your School’s Purpose and Outcome Statements
Volume 35 No. 16 // December 14, 2010
The Board, faculty, and administration have worked diligently to develop the three Purpose and Outcome Statements that ISM recommends. The Characteristics of Professional Excellence and Portrait of the Graduate have been especially noteworthy in that they are documents probably created by the faculty (with the administration’s acceptance before implementation). Thus, the faculty “owns” these two statements and how they are fulfilled programmatically and pedagogically.
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ISM Stability Marker No. 1: The Relationships of Cash Reserves, Debt, and Endowment
Volume 35 No. 16 // December 14, 2010
The first-ranked ISM Stability Marker™ has been for some time an item casually referred to as “cash reserves.” While that term is handy, this top-ranked marker is actually a formulaic mix of cash reserves, low/no debt, and endowment. You, as a member of your Board, will be called upon, at least as often as you engage in strategic planning, to give careful consideration to your own school’s position on this, and other, Stability Markers.
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The Head’s Five Major Priorities
Volume 35 No. 16 // December 14, 2010
The extent and (perceived) urgency of the daily demands on you, the School Head, could easily render the job impossible without a reliable sense on your part of the validity of the priorities you hold. Institutional success, personal/professional success, and an actual sense of joy in the role can all be within plausible reach if your priorities are “right,” and provided:
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Moonlighting: What to Do When Part-Time Jobs Clash With School Culture
Volume 35 No. 15 // November 22, 2010
Issue: A faculty member devotes a significant amount of his off-duty time and energy as an online writer for a controversial social cause that some feel is contrary to the culture of the school. Issue: A faculty member’s role as an instructor of adult education classes on pole dancing at the local community college comes to the attention of parents, who contact the School Head to express their concerns.
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